Sunday, August 14, 2011

Flaming Gorge Country

From our base in Lyman (WY), we drove about 45 miles to Manila, Utah. Here we picked up Highway 44 and were treated to some beautiful scenery on our way through the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area.

As we approached Manila, grasslands and rolling hillsides

soon gave way to grayish formations, all of which served as an introduction to what was to come.





Some of these scenes alone would have been worth the drive had we not known of what was to come. But we were anticipating more.







And then we saw the colors.

It was easy to understand how Major John Wesley Powell, on an expedition down the Green River in 1869, must have felt when he looked at this magnifi-cent country and why he named it Flaming Gorge.





Highway 44 wound back and forth as it climbed several hundred feet. With the increase in elevation, we were treated to different perspec-tives on the views of the spectacular red cliffs.










Completed in 1963, the Flaming Gorge Dam is part of the Colorado River Storage Project, which also includes Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River along the Arizona-Utah border, Navajo Dam on the San Juan River in New Mexico, and a series of three dams on the Gunnison River in Colorado. At full capacity, the lake is 91 miles long.

In the midst of the grandeur of the Flaming Gorge cliffs, there was this scene--the solitude of a fisherman by a hidden lake.

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